Amy Sedaris was born to Lou and Sharon Sedaris on March 29, 1961 in upstate New York. The new baby girl was the fourth child born to the Sedarises, after older siblings Lisa, David, and Gretchen. Her early childhood years were spent in the town of Endicott, New York. Sharon's family was from nearby Binghamton and Lou's Greek mother, known to the family as "YaYa", lived a little further away in Cortland. Most of Amy's formative years, however, were spent in Raleigh, North Carolina, after her father had been transferred there by his employer, IBM. Amy's younger sister Tiffany had been born shortly before the big move, so the youngest Sedaris sibling, Paul, is the only member of the family who is a native southerner. Many amusing anecdotes about life in the Sedaris household can be found at any bookstore within brother David Sedaris's hilarious collections of short stories and essays, Barrel Fever, Naked, Holidays on Ice, and Me Talk Pretty One Day.

Lou and Sharon Sedaris with their kids: Lisa,David, Gretchen, Amy, Tiffany, and Paul

Amy, David, Gretchen, Paul, Lisa, Tiffany

Much of her later "laughter through the tears" dark style of comedy probably stems from an event from her childhood that she feels played a big part in shaping who she is today, failing first grade in elementary school. She was also influenced by the sibling rivalry in her family, through which she and her brothers and sisters vied for their parents' attention, especially that of their mother. Amy also acquired her penchant for wearing wigs and costumes early in her childhood. She used to love to disguise herself during outings to the supermarket with her father. She has always enjoyed wearing uniforms and, in fact, she remained in the Girl Scouts even into her high school years. She honed her vocal talents, improvisation abilities, and character development skills by making prank phone calls, impersonating the voices of her parents' friends and doing impressions of other acquaintances and strangers.

After graduating from Jesse O. Sanderson High School, Amy moved away from Raleigh and joined David in Chicago in the mid 1980's. He enticed her to the Windy City and encouraged her to pursue a comedy education with the famed Second City troupe. Before she knew it she was on their Main Stage. During the time of her stint at Second City, other notable comedians such as Tim Meadows, Chris Farley, Steve Carell, Ian Gomez, and Nia Vardalos also appeared there. Amy met and worked with some of her future collaborators (Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, Mitch Rouse, Jackie Hoffman, Cynthia Caponera, David Pasquesi, Greg Hollimon) during this serendipitous period, too. The Sedaris siblings had then begun collaborating on their wacky stage plays that are presented under their "Talent Family" moniker.

Amy moved to New York City in the early 1990's and teamed up with Colbert, Dinello, and Rouse for their first television series, "EXIT 57". The quartet developed this half-hour sketch comedy series, which co-starred Jodi Lennon and featured Cynthia Caponera, for HBO Downtown Productions. "EXIT 57" aired for two seasons (1995, 1996) on cable television's Comedy Central network. The show received five CableACE nominations for Best Writing, Performing, and Comedy Series.

The "EXIT 57" creative team reunited in 1998 to put a satirical spin on that good old 1970's television staple, the After-School Special. The result was "Strangers With Candy", Comedy Central's first live-action, narrative series. During it's three-season, thirty-episode run, "Strangers With Candy" earned heaps of critical acclaim and a very strong cult following, reportedly including the likes of Cher, Tina Turner, Conan
O'Brien, Beck, Janeane Garofalo, Al Pacino, and Winona Ryder among its fans.

Amy has become quite an enterprising young renaissance woman. Besides writing and starring in a television series and waiting tables, she has also written for The New Yorker, Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly, Show People, and other notable publications. Somehow she has managed to still find the time to co-write and star in numerous Talent Family plays, which had become a highly anticipated semi-annual event.

In addition to acting and writing, Amy Sedaris has also been an accomplished career waitress. One long-term place of employment within the food service industry was Marion's Continental in the Bowery, but this was at the same time that she was doing "Strangers With Candy", so her acting schedule made it rather difficult for her to schedule any shifts after a while. In mid 2003 she started working part time at a popular eatery in her neighborhood, Mary's Fish Camp. Yes, she's allergic to shellfish so, yes, there was a potential for a bad physical reaction, but for Amy that was part of the fun.

As if all of that activity isn't enough, Amy also still tries to find some time in the wee hours of the night to bake cupcakes and mix up batches of her famous cheeseballs, which she sells out of her apartment and in theater lobbies after her stage performances to make a little extra cash. Don't forget to tip her, though. With the Sedarises it's all about the tip! Keep that in mind if you're ever at one of brother David's book signings and you ask him to perform his much-requested rendition of Billie Holiday singing the "Oscar Meyer Wiener" song.

Greenwich Village denizens can also find Amy's homemade specialties at Joe (141 Waverly Place), The Original Espresso Bar on Bleecker Street (between Christopher and Seventh), and a French bistro at the intersection of Hudson and James. And occasionally you can find her cheeseballs at the Gourmet Garage location at 7th Avenue and 10th Street.

She gained a lot of attention in the media at the beginning of the 2004 Fall TV season when she found herself at the top of the list of rumored replacements for Craig Kilborn as host of the Letterman-produced CBS "Late Late Show". She was even scheduled to helm that show on September 29th, but when she realized that the other temporary rotating hosts were basically using the gig as an audition for the permanent position, and since she had no desire for the job she bowed out gracefully.

No true Sedaris fan's "total Amy experience" is complete, however, without hearing her as a reader on the audio versions of her brother David's books: "Barrel Fever", "Naked", and "Holidays on Ice". By all means, read the print versions, but don't miss out on the audio books. Both the print and audio versions can be found in box sets, so look for them.

As for her home life, Amy shared her eclectic Greenwich Village apartment with her rabbit Tattletail, until the bunny's death in late 2002. In early 2003 she adopted another leporine housemate, whom she named Dusty. Her pal Todd Oldham even built a designer "rabbitat" for the new companion.

Some of the offbeat features that might be found in her kitschy home are a child-sized rocking chair, taxidermied woodland creatures, rabbit paintings, a hallway with walls covered in Chinese ginger candy wrappers, and a plastic roast turkey set on the fireplace mantel. Her typical day (when there are no professional commitments) doesn't really get started until after midnight, when she makes those famous cupcakes and cheeseballs.

Wonder
of the World (as Janie the clown/therapist, the helicopter pilot, the medieval-themed wench waitress, the vampire-themed waitress, and the American Indian-themed waitress; by David Lindsay Abaire; 10/11/2001 - 1/2/2002)

The Book of Liz (as Sister Elizabeth Donderstock; by the Talent Family; March - May 2001)

The
Country Club (as Louise, aka 'Froggy'; by Douglas Carter Beane; October 1999, Drama Dept. New York)

from a 2003 issue of New York magazineSexiest Comedienne | Amy Sedaris

Why: “Not Tina Fey?!” you splutter. With all due respect to the SNL star’s smart sexiness, our choice, for her endearing vulgarity—and her clever turn as Carrie’s man-eating publisher on "Sex
and the City"—is Amy Sedaris.Bonus for Fifties-Housewife Fetishists: She bakes! Her cupcakes are sold at the Original Espresso Bar on Christopher Street. “The customers say they’re delicious,” says an employee. “Small and succulent.”

Amy, from the book Face Forward by Kevyn Aucoin (Sharpei, "The Goodbye Guy"). The picture at near left is an hommage to Angie Dickinson's Police Woman.

"My sister Amy and I are working on a new play. It opens in two months and so far all we've got is the title, The Little Frieda Mysteries. We'll get together, throw out some ideas, and then, by the time I've started writing something, Amy will have decided that the character is blind, or paralyzed from the waist down. We're still in that phase where the story changes by the hour. I'll call her with a bit of dialogue and find that her phone has been disconnected by her rabbit, Tattle Tail, who regularly chews through the phone cord. Amy got this rabbit nine months ago, and now her entire apartment has been rearranged to accommodate its needs. Tattle Tail roams freely from one room to the next. She'll use a litter box, but only if it is placed upon the sofa. Great piles of alfalfa, dandelion greens, and parsley are heaped upon the living-room carpet. She's got all the carrots and dried food she can eat, but still she can't resist chewing the furniture and electrical cords. Amy will wake in the middle of the night to find Tattle Tail chewing her hair and fingernails. I left the outline of the first act on Amy's sofa and Tattle Tail was kind enough to edit it, chewing away the opening monologue and peeing on whatever was left."

8. Amy and David Sedaris: Big brother is the best-selling author of the sublime autobiographical essay collections 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' and 'Naked', full of terrific riffs about stuff like his cuckoo-clock North Carolina clan and his midget guitar teacher. Little sis was the rubber-faced star of Comedy Central's truly strange 'Strangers with Candy', as well as the blond pixie stealing scenes in 'Sex and the City' and coauthor of the book 'Wigfield'. WE LAUGHED AT the 'Me Talk Pretty' story about when Amy wore the bottom half of a fatty suit around town just for kicks - and Amy's Off Off Broadway version of the deadly serious Marsha Norman drama 'night, Mother', played for laughs in a fatty suit.

Jerri Blank is an ex-con, former user/booser/loser, ex-prostitute, bisexual high school student. At age 46 she picked up her life exactly where she left off 32 years earlier, when she dropped out of high school and ran away from home. Soon after Jerri ran away from home her mother died. Some say of a broken heart, but most agree that the bus was mostly to blame. Her father, Guy Blank, is probably the most active catatonic senior citizen in the world. Guy gave marriage a second whirl when he wed Sara around 16 years after Jerri left. The couple soon had a son, Derrick, who is the apple of his mother's eye. The rest of Jerri's life is quite ambiguous. Some hold her responsible for the introduction of drugs into popular culture; others blame her for the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a couple Kennedys. Jerri's checkered past often manifests itself in the everyday grind of her new high school world and is the major driving force of many of the plot lines that emerge in each episode. It is rumored that Jerri may have fallen off the wagon.

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